Daniels sticks up for Walker

Mitch Daniels stood in solidarity with Wisconsin's Scott Walker today, telling a Chicago radio program that his fellow governor is "only doing what he said he'd do" and denouncing people who compared the protests there to the ones in Egypt.

Walker has "got a real fix on his hands," Daniels said in a morning interview with WLS 890 AM in Chicago. "The people who are doing the demonstrating, and their allies ... spent that state broke."

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He added, "He's only doing what he said he'd do and presumably that's what we would want people in our politics, the way we'd want 'em to be.:

As for the protesters, he said, "Let's not get confused," adding later:

"There's different kinds of protest. There's the protests in the Middle East, which is the dispossessed and the underdogs of society saying, 'We want our freedom.' Then there's the protests in Wisconsin, which is people who make a lot more money, with a lot more benefits and job security than the taxpayers who fund them, saying, 'We like it the way it is and we want more.' And you know, that's a very very different arrangement."

"These folks have really ruled the roost in Wisconsin, and other places, and he's just trying I think to put a little balance back," Daniels added, saying that he thought the president was merely showing his feelings when he spoke out strongly on behalf of labor last week.

"I think very sincerely the president thinks things will work better if the government makes most of the decision and is in charge of our lives, and people like Gov. Walker and I, for that matter, disagree," he said.

Daniels, who has had battles over the size of government in the Hoosier State, spoke hours before a "right to work" bill was approved by a state House panel, amid protests of a few hundred people. .

As for acclaim he's received from pundits and even Jeb Bush recently, Daniels — the darling of many at CPAC — joked, "You gotta cut 'em a little slack — even they mess up once in awhile."